· Private foundation
Simple Gifts Fund
Its FY2025 filing reports that it accepted unsolicited grant applications.
What you funded, over time
Every grant placed by its stated purpose and the recipient’s mission, by year — across FY2017–2025.
Where the money goes
Your grants by size, and where they go.
| Recipient | Amount |
|---|---|
| NUSANTARA ARTS | $6,500 |
| GRASSROOTS GARDENS WNY | $6,000 |
| MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE PROGRAM | $6,000 |
| TUPPER ARTS CENTER | $5,000 |
| PILGRIM ST LUKES CHURCH | $5,000 |
| BUFFALO PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA | $3,500 |
| ADIRONDACK COMMUNITY FOUNDATION | $2,500 |
| JEWISH FAMILY SERVICES OF WNY | $2,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| Individual grant recipient | $2,500 |
| OUR CITY BUFFALO | $2,500 |
| ASSEMBLY HOUSE 150 | $2,500 |
| GIRLS EDUCATION COLLABORATIVE | $2,000 |
| ADIRONDAK SKY CENTER & OBSERVATORY | $2,000 |
| BCAT | $1,500 |
Do your dollars go where the need is?
Each grant placed by the hardship in its grantee’s ZIP, then read against the area’s typical level.
Your human-services grants (FY17–25, $52k) land where the poverty rate runs at 13%, against an area that typically sits at 12%. 100% of those dollars go to grantees based in above-average-need neighborhoods. Most of your grants land in higher-need ZIPs.
Matched: human-services grants are those whose grantee’s IRS cause code is Human Services. Placed by people below the poverty linein the grantee’s ZIP, averaged from the tracts in that ZIP; grantee ZIP can differ from where services are delivered.
Which US states your grants reach
US grants placed by each grantee’s ZIP, which can differ from where services are actually delivered. Need from public data — U.S. Census/ACS, CDC PLACES, Eviction Lab, USDA — shown as context about the area, never attributed to your giving.
Where the work is directed
The same grants, placed two ways — where each recipient sits, and where its stated purpose earmarks the money.
About 13% of Simple Gifts Fund’s grant dollars are earmarked, by their stated purpose, for a different county than the recipient’s own address — money that lands at a nonprofit in one place but is meant to do its work in another. Read by recipient address, 98% of the giving stays in NY; read by stated purpose it is 94% — less of the work is directed home than the recipients' locations suggest.
Recipient view: each grant at its grantee’s ZIP, mapped to a county. Directed view: each grant at the county its stated purpose names, falling back to the recipient’s county when the purpose names no place; US grants only. A county shows only if it carries the top 95% of that view’s dollars. Purposes are read from the foundation’s own 990 grant descriptions.
Who you back again
Which organizations you funded more than once, and which you funded a single time. Each grantee is matched to its own filings.
And the relationships you keep tend to grow: grantees you re-up on have seen median revenue of +51% since the first grant, against +29% for the ones you funded once.
68 repeat relationships — 17 still active in FY2025, 51 since wound down; 14 grantees were first funded in FY2025 (too recent to call).
How the two cohorts compare
Organizations
Total granted
Median revenue growth · since first grant
Still filing today
New vs renewed · share of each year
In FY2025, 55% of grant dollars renewed an existing relationship; $27k went to new ones.
Where new relationships form · theme of each grantee’s first grant
First-time = a grantee’s first year in your filing window; renewed = funded in an earlier year too. As a portfolio matures the renewed share naturally climbs — once funded, an org stays “renewable” — so the signal is the years that buck it (a new-grantee intake wave). The earliest year is left-censored: relationships that predate the data read as “new.” Theme is the grantee’s IRS cause.
Backed again, and grew
- YAYOUNG AUDIENCES OF WESTERN NEW YORK INC D/B/A ARTS FOR LEARNING WNY5× · 2017–2021 · $41k · revenue +38%
- MAMassachusetts Avenue Project Inc5× · 2017–2021 · $27k · revenue +90%
PRESERVATION BUFFALO NIAGARA5× · 2017–2023 · $24k · revenue +59%
Funded once
- GGGRASSROOTS GARDEN WNYone grant, 2017 · $8k
- WWEDIone grant, 2017 · $8k
- IGIndividual grant recipientone grant, 2019 · $7k
Repeat = funded in two or more distinct years; growth and survival are read from each grantee’s own subsequent IRS filings.
The map has a center of gravity: the average direction from the rest of the sector toward the organizations the foundation funds — the shape of its giving. Scoring every nonprofit along that direction surfaces the ones that look most like the portfolio. These are the closest matchesthat aren’t grantees — a resemblance in what they say they do, not a recommendation.
The Buffalo Institiute for Contemporary Art (Bica) is a art and educational project for Buffalo, NY. Through Innovative exhibitions, cross-discipplinary skills-based programming, and arts ecology development, bica mission is to break down…
Invest buffalo niagara foundation, inc. is a vehicle to solicit charitable contributions to develop programs, collaborate with, and provide funding to organizations that advance and encourage economic development in western new york.
To acquire, remediate, and steward lands along wny's waterfronts prioritizing public access.
The legal aid bureau of buffalo, inc., a not-for-profit organization, provides legal representation to financially needy men, women and children in western new york. through its skilled staff, the legal aid bureau seeks equal justice for…
The organization was formed for the specific purpose of operating, maintaining and protecting parks and public spaces in the city of buffalo, new york, including but not limited to parks and public spaces owned or operated by the city of…
The buffalo erie niagara land improvement corporation (benlic) seeks to confront and alleviate the problems distressed properties cause to communities by supporting municipal and regional revitalization efforts and strategically acquiring,…
Artpark & company fosters a transformative world of artistic engagement that explores the human experience, cultivates creativity, and encourages curiosity. our work is informed by a long tradition of discovery, an expectation of artistic…
The lipsey architecture center buffalo (the center) explores excellence in architecture and city planning as demonstrated by buffalo's outstanding architectural heritage. located in the richardson olmstead complex, the center will provide…
To attract new employers to the buffalo niagara region through outreach to growing companies around the world. to support business attraction, expansion and entrepreneurship, invest buffalo niagara collaborates with local businesses,…
CNY Arts' mission is to promote, support, and celebrate arts and culture in Central New York.
We envision a community that uses film & digital media to celebrate freedom of expression and to continue a legacy of innovation in media arts through education, exhibitions, and equipment access programs.
To foster a better quality of life in buffalo and the western new york region.
For reference, the grantee most central to the portfolio’s shape is United Way of Buffalo and Erie County and the most unlike its peers is Jericho Road Inc. Resemblance is measured on each organization’s own IRS 990 mission text; it reflects how work is described, not its quality or impact.
Your grantees are a median of 34 years old; the field is 18. You back the established end — and your money leans older still.
The field is 19% startups (under 5 years old) — 3% of your grantees by number, and just 1% of your money.
The orgs you fund almost never close — 0.0% lost their exemption, against 11% of the field you don’t fund.
Age = years since IRS exemption (a founding proxy). “Closed” = auto-revocation for 3 years of non-filing — a floor on closure, not proof, and bigger established orgs lapse least. Association, not causation.
68 grantees tracked through their own filings, 2017–2025.
Each one resolved to its own IRS returns and tracked year by year — your grant beside their revenue from every source. Association, dated; never a causal claim.
Counted here: distinct organizations you funded across 2017–2025, not grant rows in a single year — so this will not match the grant count on the cover. 68 of the 123 grantees resolved in that span have returns of their own we could reconcile; the rest are funded organizations whose filings we could not track year by year.
Where your money sits — by cause, then by grantee
Each org by its size and your share of it — top-left is where you’re load-bearing
Go grantee by grantee — a decade per org, and how each moved after you funded them
A decade per grantee — revenue shaded, your grants as bars, all rows on one timeline.
- Who funds ADIRONDACK FOUNDATION ↗
- Who funds YOUNG AUDIENCES OF WESTERN NEW YORK INC D/B/A ARTS FOR LEARNING WNY ↗
- Who funds Massachusetts Avenue Project Inc ↗
- Who funds PRESERVATION BUFFALO NIAGARA ↗
- Who funds Torn Space Theater Inc ↗
- Who funds NUSANTARA ARTS INC ↗
- Who funds GIRLS EDUCATION COLLABORATIVE INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO ARTS STUDIO ↗
- Who funds VIA VISUALLY IMPAIRED ADVANCEMENT ↗
- Who funds THE PARK SCHOOL OF BUFFALO ↗
- Who funds LOCUST STREET NEIGHBORHOOD ART CLASSES INC ↗
- Who funds UNITED WAY OF BUFFALO AND ERIE COUNTY ↗
- Who funds JUST BUFFALO LITERARY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO OLMSTED PARKS CONSERVANCY INC ↗
- Who funds INVESTIGATIVE POST INC ↗
- Who funds ASSEMBLY HOUSE 150 INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO FINE ARTS ACADEMY ↗
- Who funds STITCH BUFFALO INC ↗
- Who funds BUFFALO ARTS AND TECHNOLOGY CENTER INC ↗
- Who funds MEDECINS SANS FRONTIERES USA INC ↗
- Who funds HALLWALLS INC ↗
The grantmakers whose grantees overlap with yours far more than size alone predicts. Each orbits closer the stronger the alignment; the arcs between them show where they also fund each other. Here it reads as a tightly interlocked camp — most of these funders back each other's grantees too.
Open a dossier: Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo Inc · The Western New York Foundation · The Baird Foundation · The Frank G Raichle Foundation · The John R Oishei Foundation · First Niagara Foundation · James H Cummings Foundation Inc · Foundation for Jewish Philanthropies Inc · Children's Foundation of Erie County Inc · The Richard W Rupp Foundation · The Margaret L Wendt Foundation · The Ralph C Wilson Jr Foundation
Affinity is a Gamma-Poisson posterior co-funding rate, re-centered on the typical rate, so thin evidence shrinks toward no signal. A research starting point: overlap is association, not proof of shared intent.
Government reliance of your grantees
Every dot is one organization Simple Gifts Fund funds. Left–right is the share of its income from government; up–down is the share from you. Bigger dots raise more. Filter to federal or a single department — and drag the year to watch it move.
- Partners in Health a Nonprofit Corporation — 0% of income from government
- Oxfam-America Inc — 0% of income from government
Government income is each org’s traced federal awards (USASpending — grants and contracts) plus state payments (open checkbooks) as a share of its total revenue (IRS Form 990); the self-reported government-grant line (990 line 1e) is carried for cross-check: a grantee that reports government grants we could not trace to a source is left off the chart rather than shown as receiving none. An association, not a claim that your grant caused the public funding. Coverage is precision-first — a floor, not a census; state records exist for 9 states, so a grantee outside them shows no state figure (dimmed) rather than a false zero. Federal award amounts are obligations, which can span years, so a single-year share is indicative. 990 filings lag 12–24 months.